1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a method and apparatus for handling a telephone call, especially for use in the context of a fast food delivery service and other similar businesses.
2. Background of the Invention
It is very common for customers to order a product over the telephone. One particular industry where this is a very widespread activity is for home delivery of fast food, for example pizzas. The characteristics of this business place significant constraints on the handling of customer calls. Thus frequently there is no pre-existing arrangement (e.g. a contract) that ties the customer to any given pizza delivery outlet. Rather, the customer will telephone one establishment, but if their call is not handled swiftly, they may then telephone another rival establishment. If they receive good service from this rival establishment, they may call the rival first next time they need a pizza. In other words, there is high customer mobility between competing businesses, and accordingly customer service standards have to be very high to retain customers. This particular applies to the handling of incoming telephone calls, which represent the first point of contact with the customer (when it is easiest for the customer to retract and go elsewhere). Existing systems generally do not provide a mechanism to reward and retain loyal customers.
Another problem is that the call rate into pizza delivery outlets may be highly bunched. For example, if there is a popular event on television, there may be a sharp peak in calls immediately before or after the event, or during an interval (e.g. an advertising break). These variations in incoming call rate exacerbate the problem of providing a good telephone service to all customers.
A further consideration is that most pizza delivery establishments are small businesses. They cannot afford large-scale call handling facilities, either in terms of the infra structure, or the staff to run them.
It is also common for such pizza establishments to be franchise operations. The franchisor would like customers to experience a common customer interface irrespective of which franchisee they contact in order to build brand value for the franchise, but this is difficult with multiple franchisees each operating a highly local service. There is also a concern amongst franchisors that some franchisees might hide part of their business from the franchisor (in order to avoid royalty payments).
Accordingly, there are significant challenges in providing good telephone service for pizza delivery outlets and other such businesses.